by Guest Contributor | Jun 24, 2016 | Opinion
Karl Widerquist, Co-Chair BIEN <Karl@Widerquist.com>
Louise Haagh, Co-Chair, BIEN <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
As co-chairs of BIEN, we would like to invite members and prospective members of BIEN, to join the leadership of BIEN. Getting involved is easy. There are two ways to go it:
- Run for an elected position at BIEN’s next General Assembly at the 2016 BIEN Congress in Seoul (July 9, 2016)
- Volunteer to work on one of BIEN’s volunteer taskforces.
BIEN currently has 9 elected positions, 8 members of Executive Committee (EC) and the chair of the International Board. There is a proposal to expand that number to 11. The duties of the potential 11 elected members are described at the links below:
The BIEN EC
The International Board:
BIEN
In the past, BIEN’s elections have usually not been very competitive. There have been few nominations. Most candidates have run unopposed. We think that BIEN has outgrown that phase of its existence, but we will explain a little about how that happened. When BIEN began there was no Basic Income movement. The group was small. It didn’t have to make many controversial decisions. It needed people to volunteer to do things. The difficult was not in deciding who got the positions, but finding someone willing to do the things BIEN needed to do. So, the outgoing EC has always recruited people to run to sure that there is at least one candidate who is willing and able to do each job. Again this year, the outgoing EC has recruited people to run next time, but we also want to open it but and make sure that every BIEN member (and everybody willing to become a BIEN member knows that they are invited to run for a leadership position.
As BIEN and the Basic Income movement have grown, we need more people to take an active part in running the organization. So, we are doing two things: First, we invite everyone to make nominations. We hope for a lot of them and for good, healthy, competitive elections. Second, we have proposed some changes in BIEN’s statutes to create a more open, inviting election process in future years.
We stress that the EC is an executive committee, not a legislative committee. By this, we mean that the role of the EC is to do the day-to-day work need to maintain and expand BIEN and further its goals. Although the EC does make policy for BIEN in between General Assembly (GA) meetings, its primary role is work.
If you are elected to the EC you commit to attending monthly EC meetings over the internet and to put in approximately 10 hours per month of work for your assigned specialized task. If BIEN has funds available, it might as you to travel to represent BIEN at an event or to attend a meeting.
Getting involved in the leadership of BIEN is easy for anyone who wants to contribute to the work of BIEN. Often, when more people are interested in joining the EC than there are spaces on the committee, the EC invites the additional candidates to join as informal non-voting members of the committing. Volunteer members of the EC share the duties with official members and participate in EC discussions even if they do not officially vote. Many of them later become full members of the committee.
In addition to these positions, BIEN has unlimited opportunities to get involved as a volunteer. Volunteers work with BIEN on some agreed task, but do not attend meetings of the EC. Volunteering is a good way to get involved with BIEN. Many people do so for a year or years before they run for an elected position. Please see our call for volunteers to see how you might get involved.
If you would like to run for one of the positions on the EC, here is now you do it:
- Join BIEN, if you haven’t already. See the instructions for becoming a member.
- Nominate yourself or get another member of BIEN to nominate you by emailing the Secretary. Get another member to email the Secretary of BIEN to second your nomination. (You can also nominate yourself in person at the BIEN Congress.)
- Send the secretary a paragraph about yourself and why you would like to join the committee. This is not a requirement, but it will help your chances of getting elected.
- You do not have to be present at the General Assembly in Seoul to run for a leadership position in BIEN, or to nominate someone, or to second someone’s nomination, but you do have to be present to vote.
If you would like to see who has been nominated for these positions so far, they are listed here with links to their bios. We will continue to update this list as more nominations come in.
Karl Widerquist, Co-Chair BIEN <Karl@Widerquist.com>
Louise Haagh, Co-Chair, BIEN <louise.haagh@york.ac.uk>
by Kate McFarland | Jun 21, 2016 | Opinion
If we are indeed approaching a jobless future, then our institutions of education must accommodate: schooling must be rethought to prepare people to live fulfilling and productive lives outside of paid employment.
This is the real lesson to take away from a recent blog post by Marc Tucker, president of the National Center on Education and the Economy, in which he imagines the role of education in a future society — or a not-so-future society — in which machines have assumed most of the jobs, and a universal basic income provides a modicum of security to keep displaced workers off the streets.
Tucker imagines the techno-utopian vision of the future made popular by the basic income advocates of Silicon Valley (he cites Y Combinator’s Sam Altman and Matt Krisloff, along with Union Square Ventures’ Albert Wenger) and raises what is, to be sure, an important question: “What should those of us in the education community make of all this?”
It is worth quoting Tucker’s own reply at length, as it falls widely off the mark — and, in doing so, reveals a need for basic income proponents to be clearer, and more emphatic, about the role that education could play in a future society with fewer jobs and no need to work for living:
Consider what the educator might have to do if this vision of automated life comes to pass. We would be sorting students into two bins, one bin for the few masters of the universe who get the great jobs, create the future and amass enough money to make sure that it is their children who succeed them and not the children of the others who are not as fortunate as they to be in the driver’s seat when the ball got rolling. And then there will be the bin for the others, who really do not need all those wonderful skills that the masters of the universe need, because they will not need to earn a living and will not have an opportunity to gain the dignity that comes with paid work.
And how will we decide which bin to put each child into? We could do it on “merit,” but, given the overwhelming advantages enjoyed by the master class, we might just as well tell them that their children will automatically be assigned to an education designed to prepare them for the jobs their parents have.
In limning this dystopian vision, it seems that Tucker continues to cling to the very presupposition that must be rejected — that the main role of education is to prepare students for careers in paid employment.
Instead, in a society with mass automation and universal basic income, educational institutions could and should foster (gasp) learning, rather than merely existing to provide students with the credentials necessary to receive a job. Schools could return to a greater emphasis on the liberal arts — engendering students’ thirst for knowledge for its own sake — and even the arts proper. More classes could introduce service learning components, encouraging students to take an avid interest in helping to improve their communities. And, yes, schools could continue to include substantial components in STEM: many students display a nascent interest in designing new inventions, learning about modern technologies, or writing their own computer code, for instance, that emerges long before they begin to worry about what job they would need to afford a nice house in the suburbs. A school that fails to motivate students to acquire and produce knowledge, except insofar as they come to believe it necessary to obtain a well-paying job, is a school that has failed in its most fundamental purpose.
And we can, of course, cast aside the nonsense about sorting students into bins: all students deserve education in the sciences, humanities, and arts — all students deserve a chance to make valuable contributions to culture, society, and their local communities — irrespective of their eventual job prospects, all the more so when students will be liberated to pursue a multitude of projects beyond the confines of paid employment.
If Tucker’s point is that such education would be economically useless and so fall by the wayside, he misses the central point that, in such a society, economic concerns will no longer hold such sway over our lives.
Basic income advocates have not been silent on the topic of education — and, where they have addressed the matter, their words resonate with the points I have raised above.
For example, consider the views of two of the idea’s most prominent advocates: the economist Guy Standing, Professor at SOAS, University of London, and cofounder of Basic Income Earth Network; and the young Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman, whose book Utopia for Realists has done much to popularize the idea in the Netherlands and elsewhere.
In his two important and influential books on the precariat, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class and The Precariat Charter, Standing stresses the need to return “Enlightenment values” to education:
The neo-liberal state has been transforming school systems to make them a consistent part of the market society, pushing education in the direction of ‘human capital’ formation and job preparation. It has been one of the ugliest aspects of globalisation.
Through the ages education has been regarded as a liberating, questioning, subversive process by which the mind is helped to develop nascent capacities. The essence of the Enlightenment was that the human being could shape the world and refine himself or herself through learning and deliberation. In a market society, that role is pushed into the margins. (The Precariat, p. 68)
Education is supposed to provide a road to wisdom and to stimulate curiosity, ethical values and creativity. Instead, as the number put through education grow globally, for more and more people it is just about preparing them for jobs and competing for jobs. Education is a public good. That is under threat. Enlightenment values at the heart of education must be revived, giving more scope for health non-conformism and the learning of ethics, empathy and morality. (The Precariat Charter, p. 293)
In a similar vein, Bregman devotes a section of Utopia for Realists to criticizing contemporary debates about education for invariably revolving around the question “Which knowledge and skills do today’s students need to get hired in tomorrow’s job market – the market of 2030?” This, he says, “is precisely the wrong question”:
In point of fact, we should be posing a different question altogether: Which knowledge and skills do we want our children to have in 2030? Then, instead of anticipating and adapting, we’d be focusing on steering and creating. Instead of wondering what we need to do to make a living, in this or that bullshit job, we could ponder how we want to make a living. (p. 136)
In laying the groundwork for a “utopia” with a basic income and 15-hour work week, Bregman sees the institution of education as existing to prepare students “not only for the job market but, more fundamentally, for life.” (p. 137)
There is a need for proponents of universal basic income to be more vocal in expressing such visions — or demands — for reforming the education system.
For one, a new vision for education can be wielded to address one deplorably common concern raised in criticisms of universal basic income — that, without a job, individuals would find their lives meaningless and valueless. Indeed, elsewhere in the same blog, Tucker states:
If the people rebelling now feel that they have been cast aside, just wait until they are told that their services are no longer needed and government will take care of them with a handout. As I see it, the most devastating aspect of the condition of many people now out of work is the damage to their self-respect, their image of themselves as contributors to their family and their community, the kind of self-respect that comes from the dignity conferred by work that is valued by the community.
Perhaps the very problem here is that our educational institutions have not adequately prepared workers to lead lives as valuable and productive citizens outside of the bounds of a job.
Marc Tucker, “Paying People Not to Work,” Education Week, June 4, 2016.
Thanks for Genevieve Shanahan for reviewing a draft of this article.
Thanks to my supporters on Patreon. (To see how you too can support my work for Basic Income News, click the link.)
by Guest Contributor | Jun 20, 2016 | Opinion
The level of Basic Income (BI) is a matter of heated debate in discussions of BI for national implementation, investigating the level at which BI would be ‘high enough’. There is also growing dispute regarding ‘partial’ vs. ’full’ BI. This was the central topic of investigation at this year’s BI conference in Maastricht in January. The following calculations, using a common formula and comparing BI levels for 24 European/OECD countries, aim to assist in the resolution of this debate.
We don’t want to make the system worse than it is. It’s logical, then, that the minimal level of BI should reach, at least, the level of current Social Assistance (SA): we could call this ‘partial’ BI. All BI proposals included in this analysis satisfy this condition.
It follows that implementation of a BI close to the level offered by the current social security system (e.g., the SA level) implies budget neutrality in countries with a more universal system.[1] This follows the argument “If we can afford our current welfare system, we can afford basic income” that Max Ghenis has well elaborated. These proposals might be socially more acceptable, given that the change would be ‘minimal’.
So, if the level of SA in a country indicates 1) the socially acceptable level of social aid and 2) the first estimation of the social welfare budget, BI at the same level would likely be the most financially and socially affordable solution, offering the shortest implementation time frame. Proposals for Slovenia[2], Hungary[3] and Finland[4] belong to this category.
On the other hand, the level of BI should be high enough to ensure a material existence and participation in society. We assume this when we argue that BI should be at least at the level of the current Poverty Threshold (PT): we could call this ’full’ BI. BI at such a level would probably fulfill the role of an emancipatory welfare system.[5] Proposals for Switzerland[6] and the Netherlands[7] fit into this second category.
The question is, how costly are lowered aspirations regarding a ‘partial’ BI level (e.g., in Slovenia, Finland and Hungary) in service of affordability and/or social acceptance in the foreseeable future? Will we achieve anything? As the microsimulation in Slovenia demonstrated, however, even a partial BI proposal (budget neutral, well below PT and above SA) proved to be: 1) better for the majority, 2) the same or better for the more vulnerable and 3) better for the lowest deciles. The Hungarian BI proposal seems to draw similar conclusions.
To serve discussion regarding the level of BI in different countries, a common formula (similar to that used for the Slovenian proposal) was used to calculate the levels of BI proposed in various countries.
Formula: BI = an average of three components:
- Social Assistance for a single person with no children: Indicates the currently acceptable minimal level of social aid (and the ‘budget’ of the current social security system).
- 1/2 of the Poverty Threshold at the point of 60% of the median income: Takes into account income distribution and the risk of poverty.
- 1/3 of average net wages: Takes into account the ‘value of work.’
A table with Basic Income calculations for 24 European and OECD countries allows us to draw comparisons across and within countries regarding: the social protection system (e.g., SA), the average wage (AW), the poverty threshold (PT), BI calculations using the same formula (both in national currencies and euro) and different BI proposals. It’s very important to note, however, that in countries where the level of SA is already higher than the BI calculation, the existing SA should be taken as a starting point. BI proposals for Finland and the Netherlands belong to this group.
Such BI calculations (that are above SA & ‘budget neutral’ & below PT) could serve BI discourse as the first benchmark:
- at which we could expect results that would be: a) better for the majority, b) the same or better for the more vulnerable and c) better for the lowest deciles;
- of the BI level calculation for countries that, as yet, have made no BI calculations;
- to evaluate competing national proposals;
- to evaluate proposals across countries;
- to evaluate existing social security systems, investigating by how much they diverge from this preferable solution;
- of common European social welfare solutions made by the people (of 99%) for the people and not from the EU elites.
Valerija Korošec: PhD in Postmodern Sociology, MSc in European Social Policy Analysis. Author of (eng) UBI Proposal in Slovenia (2012) sl. Predlog UTD v Sloveniji: Zakaj in kako?(2010). Co-editor UBI in Slovenia (2011). Member of Sekcija za promocijo UTD. Member of UBIE. Slovenian representative in BIEN. Fields of expertise: poverty, inequality, sastifaction with life, social policy anlaysis, gender equality, ‘beyond GDP’, paradigm shift, postmodernism, UTD, basic income. Slovenian. Born 1966 and raised in Maribor. Lives in Ljubljana. Employed at the Institue of Macroeconomic Analysis and Development (Government Office of Republic Slovenia). Views under my name are my own. @valerijaSlo
Footnotes:
[1] All included countries have a universal SA system, except: 1) Finland, Germany, Belgium, Estonia and Denmark, which have different levels of assistance based on employment status according to OECD statistic – in these cases it was the data for the ‘Employed’ SA level that were included; and 2) the United Kingdom, Greece and Italy, which have no scheme comparable to SA.
[2] https://basicincome.org/bien/pdf/munich2012/Korosec.pdf
[3] https://let.azurewebsites.net/upload/tanulmany.pdf (English version unavailable).
[4] https://basicincome.org/news/2015/12/finland-basic-income-experiment-what-we-know/
[5] https://basicincome-europe.org/ubie/charter-ubie/
[6] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-pay-idUSBRE9930O620131004
[7] Alexander de Roo, by mail.
by Jason Burke Murphy | Jun 10, 2016 | Opinion
I have been part of Basic Income Earth Network’s and US Basic Income Guarantee Network’s social media team for a while and I want to clarify something for as many readers as possible. There are three ways of looking at the basic income movement: Basic Income can be endorsed as a (1) proposal or (2) a project or (3) an idea. A lot of communication causes people to evaluate each other more harshly than they need to because they mistake where the speaker or writer is coming from.
I will say what I mean and show how this distinction helps me.
(1) Basic Income as Proposal: When I describe basic income as a proposal, I am referring to any bill or law that implements an unconditional grant. Here we are looking at the policy. Here are some US-based examples:
Alaska invests a small amount of the land rent it charges and puts out the dividend to every citizen. They give about $2,000 to every individual and $8,000 for a family of four.
The Healthy Climate and Family Security Act would put a cap on carbon, charge fees, and distribute the revenue to everyone. This would amount to about $1,000 per person and $4,000 for a family of four. (Ref. www.climateandprosperity.org)
The Fair Tax act gets rid of the income tax and replaces it with a national sales tax. They acknowledge that this move would hurt low-income people so they include a dividend for all. They list around $7,200. (https://fairtax.org/)
An interesting common feature of these three examples is that basic income was an afterthought for many supporters. These proposals are not parts of projects that seek to abolish poverty or secure independence for all.
The Alaskan Governor at the time the dividend was implemented, Jay Hammond, was following the basic income movement and he sought a more substantial amount. Alaska, however, has never had a basic income movement. There has never been an attempt to push the grant all the way to a poverty-ending amount. That said, at $2,000 a year for all family members, the Alaskan Permanent Fund raises the incomes of low-income families more than most other proposals out there. The dividends were largely an accidental product of the State’s Constitution, which gave un-owned land to the State. If power-brokers in Alaska had known that this land included some of the most lucrative oil reserves in the world, this would not have happened. Hammond’s commitment combined with these fortunate circumstances produced the Alaska Permanent Fund.
Supporters of the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act are mainly trying to develop an answer to the threat of climate change. They understand that a cap on carbon would raise prices on fuel and other things that many low and moderate income people need. Some supporters are enthused about the dividend to be sure, but it is very seldom sold as a stepping stone for a dividend high enough to foster independence. Again, with that said, there are very few proposals that would result in an increase in average income of $1,000 in low-income communities.
Fair Tax supporters are primarily focused on getting rid of the income tax. The dividend is seldom emphasized in their literature. When it comes to the impact on poverty, the math is more complex for this proposal, because the new sales tax would be high. Proponents do cite economists who stress that the Fair Tax would have a progressive impact.
When Basic Income Earth Network or US Basic Income Guarantee Network links to an article describing a project like this, we get a lot of comments that evaluate them as if they were the entire basic income project. The proposal is treated like a project. We are informed that you cannot live on $2,000 a year. We know that. Many respondents “project” projects onto proposals. They don’t evaluate the proposal but an imagined series of other proposals that would stem from an imputed project. When Silicon Valley investors start a basic income pilot, we are told that they want to cut this and that. But they have not said so, and we will not know their project until they start making concrete demands.
Lots of media presume that a basic income replaces all other social provisions, which is a view that I have only rarely encountered in my time with engaged members of USBIG and BIEN. We hear a lot of false news that Holland or Finland is replacing everything with BI. Projects are being foisted onto proposals and policies.
Keep in mind that a basic income may well be implemented as an afterthought or as a part of a project that most anti-poverty activists oppose. Charles Murray’s proposal would consist of $10,000 per person and a $3,000 health care voucher. This would replace everything that currently promotes social protection. When he emphasizes the amount of money this would save, that includes bureaucratic expenses, but that also entails a huge withdrawal of other expenses, such as social provisions that many anti-poverty activities would rather keep .
While we should not endorse a bill that implemented Murray’s proposal, we can acknowledge the grant is a good idea if it is not accompanied with harmful cuts. If such a basic income were to be implemented (and Paul Ryan has expressed an interest in consolidating anti-poverty provisions), those who support BI as part of an anti-poverty project will have to fight to keep the grant and raise it. We have to talk about basic income now so that anti-poverty activists do not oppose it.
(2) Basic Income as Project: Once a basic income is part of a project, we have to look at what the whole project seeks to do. Many of the supporters of basic income pilots in Finland also support austerity as the right response to the European financial crisis. Almost everyone involved with Basic Income Earth Network and its affiliates are opposed to austerity. They see basic income as a way to combat poverty directly, with less bureaucracy and more security for most citizens. Many supporters of basic income in Finland are working to make sure the pilots are an opportunity to push basic income as emancipatory .
How it is funded, what is cut, what is not cut—all of these factors turn a policy item (an unconditional cash grant) into a project. We have to learn how to assess whole projects.
Left-wing organizations should make a basic income part of their left-wing project. Left-wingers that denounce basic income as “neo-liberal” are refusing to de-link the policy from a rival project. They should write out what sorts of basic income they would support and condemn the powers-that-be for not securing economic independence for all.
Free-market enthusiasts (I am not calling them “right-wing”) should make a basic income part of their free-market project. Those that denounce a basic income as “socialist” or “communist” are refusing to de-link the policy from a rival project. They need basic income if they care about extending the benefits of markets to everyone.
In the US, there are no left-wing or free-market organizations (or magazines or parties) that have stated clearly whether or not basic income is part of their project. My hypothetical left-wingers and free-marketers are based on reading a few thousand Facebook comments and individual columnists.
De-linking the proposal from the project can be difficult. Would an otherwise free-market-oriented economist with a basic income in the mix still be “left-wing”? Is basic income such a good policy that we should support someone who supports a rival project? Some people are suspect of an Alaska-style dividend just because they know the state usually votes Republican.
These are the sort of choices we will face. If a supporter of a rival project embraces basic income, one has to decide whether or not to jump ship. Some basic income supporters will want to work within other projects. Some will work within the Greens or within Socialist or Labor or Environmental organizations. Others might name a particular bill and lobby for it.
Basic Income Action in the US has stated that they seek any unconditional grant that leaves the least-well-off and the majority with more income than before. They have lobbied for the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act and hope to get a bill sponsored that has a full-fledged basic income in mind. BIA argues that this project improves any other project. Whether they are the left or the right, whether they have a good tax plan or a bad one in mind, they would be that much better with a basic income in the mix. See them at www.basicincomeaction.org.
(3) Basic Income as Idea: There is another way to think about basic income. This is an idea that gets in your head. Once you realize that it is mostly a question of political will, you start to think about how different the world would be if everyone had a share. You start to wonder how different schools would be. How different political life would be. How different the art world and the sport world would be.
When I first heard about basic income, I was excited because I saw it getting to people who need it. I had seen the manipulation of money and power deny the invisible and the powerless the resources they need. Too many times I saw “jobs programs” pretend to hire “everyone who sought work.” Sports arenas and lectures were sold as anti-poverty programs. A basic income gets around all that. Now, I think more about how much more powerful low-income communities will be. And I see better the work they are already doing.
Sarath Davala, Renana Jhabvala, Soumya Kapoor Mehta, and Guy Standing organized a pilot program in India and wrote a book that testifies to its emancipatory effects. A video they made provides a nice synopsis. One sees here an image of strong people made more powerful.
I see the same impact in low-income parts of the US. Basic income gets around the pretending so many people do when they approach poverty. I wrote a piece on how a basic income could work in the Saint Louis/Ferguson area that has this sort of emancipation in mind. One of my main goals was to get readers to just see what a difference more income would make. We should spare them the hectoring about each and every choice they make and issue a share.
The Swiss Basic Income Movement mostly sought to push basic income as an idea in Switzerland but also all over the world. History’s largest poster posed the question: What Would You Do If Your Income Were Taken Care Of? They posed it in English and reassembled the poster in Berlin . A picture of the poster was shown in Times Square. They are posing a question to the world.
The movement has pushed people to think about what makes a life and a society good. Long before basic income becomes a policy, it does great work as an idea.
Another example is the Canadian Association of Sexual Assault Centres. Their shelters talk with residents about basic income. They have a copy of the Pictou Statement they wrote in which they proclaim their support for basic income.
The statement calls on some of the most vulnerable people in the world to think about how different things would be if everyone had a share:
“We refuse to accept market measures of wealth. They make invisible the important caring work of women in every society. They ignore the well-being of people and the planet, deny the value of women’s work, and define the collective wealth of our social programs and public institutions as “costs” which cannot be borne. They undermine social connections and capacities (social currency).”
Publicly endorsing basic income offers a chance for different relationships between people. When a shelter tells someone fleeing assault that they want a different allocation of resources, this breaks the long chain of bureaucrats, landlords, advisors, and hustlers. When I tell someone that I think they deserve a share, I have a chance to show that I recognize them as valuable. That is a powerful idea.
I have also found that people who are not sure they believe basic income is feasible politically end up pointing to other social provisions that they consider more efficient or politically feasible. They start to talk about education and health and public employment. This is a far better conversation than one that argues between some provisions and no provisions, which is the one we are hearing far too often. That is a powerful idea.
A lot of people have seen police violence, corruption, and the privileged position of the wealthy, and they just can’t imagine a government that macro-manages and micro-manages a just economy. However, they have seen Social Security issue a check to everyone and they have seen the IRS tax forms issue an exemption. They know that this proposal is simple enough for even a bureaucratic government to implement. That makes this a powerful idea.
Lots of people are saying that they think basic income is great, and then they get challenged to produce a proposal or to spell out their project. I want to see more basic income policy proposals out there. I want to see more people make basic income part of their projects. But we also need to see people saying “The world be better if we did this.” We need to get as many people as we can to say “That’s a powerful idea.”
by Guest Contributor | Jun 8, 2016 | Opinion
Karl Widerquist, co-chair
Louise Haagh, co-chair
We, the two co-chairs of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), have made the following proposal to BIEN’s 2016 General Assembly: “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them.”[*] BIEN has held Congresses once every two years since its inception in 1986. The Congress in Seoul will be BIEN’s sixteenth. In this op-ed we explain why a move to annual Congresses are so important to BIEN at this time, and we address some concerns people might have with annual Congresses.
The main reason that BIEN needs yearly Congresses is that the Basic Income movement has grown enormous. In 1986, when BIEN began, it is hard to say there was a movement. There was a small tight-knit group of researchers; most of them came to every conference. Although some activists were interested in Basic Income, public opinion was not at point to make a real activist movement viable in many countries. Today Basic Income has millions of supporters around the world with many more joining every day. The topic has entered mainstream political debate in dozens of countries, many of which had no previous history of high-level discussion of basic income.
BIEN has to keep pace with the growth of the movement. Its role is to get people involved, to exchange ideas, to give people a chance to build on each other’s ideas. It’s missing too many opportunities to do that with such infrequent Congresses.
The second most important reason to begin having yearly Congresses is that BIEN has grown. BIEN was constituted as the Basic Income European Network, and its geographic reach was limited almost entirely to Western Europe until BIEN expanded to become the Basic income Earth Network in 2004. Even then, for several more years, most of its membership and most of the people attending its Congresses were European. But with BIEN’s expanded reach, it had to have Congresses in other parts of the world. BIEN has had successful Congresses in Africa, South America, and North America, and we expect it will have a successful Congress in Asia this July, but the expansion of geographical reach of BIEN’s Congresses has meant fewer Congresses in any region. Only the world’s most privileged people can travel halfway around the globe to attend a conference. We need to have more conferences in more regions so that more people have the opportunity to attend a one now and then.
We see very little downside to this proposal. Most organizations that have conferences have them yearly. The amount of basic income literature and activism going on today ensures that there is no risk that we will run out of new ideas to discuss at the congresses.
The most likely concern that might make people hesitate to endorse annual Congresses is the fear that they might be too much work and that BIEN might outstrip its resources. Obviously, two conferences are twice the work of one conference, but two conferences are not necessarily more work for any one person. Each BIEN Congress is run by one of BIEN’s affiliate networks. They take on the responsibility of raising funds, finding facilities, inviting participants, creating schedule, and virtually everything else involved with running a conference. The BIEN Executive Committee’s role is limited to overseeing this effort to ensure consistency.
When BIEN began in 1986, it had no affiliates, and there was only one national basic income network—the Citizens Income Trust[†] in the United Kingdom—in existence in the world. Today BIEN has about two dozen affiliates on all six habitable continents. Most of them either have hosted a BIEN Congress or would like to if they got the chance. Many more networks, many of them potential affiliates, are springing up around the world. In its affiliates and members, BIEN has far more resources than ever before. Many networks would like to get more involved in the movement by bringing the BIEN Congress to their country or region.
In 2014, three excellent proposals were put forward to host the 2016 Conference—one each from Finland, the Netherlands, and (South) Korea. According to BIEN’s rules at the time, the General Assembly could only pick one. That meant that we had to turn down two others. It was little consolation to those groups to say, “although you can’t host a BIEN Congress in two years, if you reapply, maybe one of you can host it in four years and the other can host it in six years.” That is an extremely long time to wait. We had to turn away groups that were willing and able to put on great conferences.
As the co-chairs of BIEN, we have been in touch with several groups that are interested in hosting the next BIEN Congress, and some of them are interested in doing it as early as 2017. We are, therefore, confident that we can move to yearly conferences right away. If in any year we do not have an affiliate network capable of hosting a conference, we have written the proposal in a way that allows us to skip a year.
Therefore, we see very good reason to support—and very little reason to oppose—a move to annual BIEN Congresses. We ask all of BIEN’s members to join us in supporting this motion.
— notes —
[*] The full wording is, “Starting as soon as possible, BIEN will have yearly Congresses whenever affiliate networks are available to host them. If BIEN cannot find affiliate networks to organize Congresses yearly, they will continue with Congresses once every two years.”
[†] Then called the Basic Income Research Group.
BIEN Congress
by Jurgen De Wispelaere | Jun 7, 2016 | Opinion
Yesterday, the Swiss voted on the proposal to provide a basic income sufficient to allow the people to live in a dignified manner and participate in public life. The proposal was voted down with 23.1% of the voters in favour and 76.9% against. With a participation rate of 46.3% that boils down to little over 10% of the Swiss population supporting basic income. No doubt the Swiss campaigners as well as those watching the referendum closely will be conducting a post-mortem of what happened and how to interpret these results.
I for one believe this is a result that the Swiss campaign should be proud of. A 23% yes vote in a popular vote against the background of pretty much unanimous establishment resistance is a major achievement. Yesterday’s vote breaks firm ground for a basic income debate in years to come. The Swiss debate is not over, not by a long shot! Perhaps even more importantly, as many commentators have rightly pointed out, the Swiss campaign – one of the most creative and professional I have seen in a long time – managed to create wave after wave in the media. With policy attention following media attention, it is fair to say without the Swiss we wouldn’t be where we are now in Finland, Netherlands, Canada or France. So for that, Switzerland we thank you!
But appreciating what Switzerland has achieved shouldn’t prevent us from asking important (and perhaps some hard) questions about what happened or didn’t happen in the Swiss campaign. What political strategy lessons can we learn from Switzerland? And how can we use those lessons in countries as diverse as Finland, Canada or Portugal? We can all learn from the Swiss experience, and conversely this is the time for the Swiss campaign to educate us on the upsides and downsides of their strategies.
One obvious point of contention – one that affects every jurisdiction campaigning for basic income – is whether to promote the principle of an unconditional and universal basic income granted or instead to focus on a concrete proposal, including a clear indication of how high the basic income will be and how it would be funded. The Swiss referendum asked voters to vote on the principled argument, leaving both amount and funding to be determined by legislation. This may put off some voters who are risk- and, above all, ambiguity-averse (preferring current certainty over future possibility). Partly to counter this, the Swiss campaigned for a basic income pitched at 2,500 Swiss francs (approximately €2250, £1,750 or USD2,555). Many no doubt will argue that this high sum traded-off uncertainty for genuine anxiety amongst many voters, and that a lower level of basic income may have been a more prudent approach. The reality is we don’t really know, and for that reason a genuine post-mortem would be a very useful step going forward.
I’d like to point out another lesson from the Swiss referendum, and perhaps an uncomfortable one for most basic income advocates. In recent months a number of polls have been put forward indicating growing levels of support for basic income. Most recently there was the Dahlia Research poll which suggested on average 64% (of surveyed EU countries) were supportive of a basic income. These results are regarded as indicative or even evidence of robust basic income support. But the Swiss case puts a sobering note here. A poll conducted in April asking 20000 Swiss citizens their voting intentions found 40% intended to vote in favour. The reality turned out quite different, with only 10% of Swiss coming up to vote and then voting yes.
This shouldn’t surprise us because political polling is a notoriously difficult enterprise, and polls around basic income are easily influenced by framing of the questions as well as real-world events. For an example of the latter, the Finnish working group coordinated by Kela found that Finnish support for basic income decreased quite radically once questions about the amount of basic income are paired with corresponding questions about the taxes needed to fund it. This is also why we should really stop being overexcited by polls claiming to offer evidence that only 2% (or 4%, or whatever really) of surveyed individuals would stop working: the so-called social desirability bias means that polls are simply the wrong tool to answer the question of what people would do when they get a basic income.
The bigger question – and lesson to be learned from Switzerland – is whether we have a really good understanding of the level of support for basic income amongst ordinary citizens as well as key policy stakeholders. Basic income support is growing as more people become familiar with the idea, but there is still a lot of work to be done understanding how to translate this support into a robust political constituency. I think our Swiss friends will be able to help us understand the next steps to push basic income onto the policy agenda.
Jurgen De Wispelaere is a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Tampere (Finland), where he is part of the Kela-led research team preparing a national basic income experiment in Finland.
